New Action and MORE representatives met in November

Three representatives of New Action met with three representatives of MORE back on November 27.

MORE brought one agenda item: what was New Action doing in the upcoming election? At that point we were working on an agreement to run a full slate, cross-endorsing Mulgrew and Unity’s high school people, with some cross-endorsements in return. That agreement had not been finalized.

New Action brought 3 items. We asked about having a formal means of communication, when issues came up where the caucuses needed to reach other. That was achieved. We asked about assisting each other where we agreed on an activity (such as the petition campaign against mayoral control; MORE probably would have participated, but we did not have a way of getting each other involved). MORE was not as interested in that discussion, although they agreed in a general way. They were more concerned with the immediately upcoming election, but the discussion was positive. The third was what we would do if a bad contract agreement came down. We discussed a joint effort from almost 20 years ago that helped defeat a bad contract.

Then New Action added an item. We raised with concern the level of hostility from the last election period (2010). Kit Wainer said that MORE planned to attack Unity, not New Action. He thought that New Action would have a hard time campaigning without going after MORE – but we disagreed. Then we asked about the bloggers, we mentioned recent disparaging posts. Kit said he never reads the blogs, and that MORE does not control them. We pointed out that if the blogs support MORE and write outrageous things, and MORE does not dissociate itself from those comments, then it looks like MORE supports those comments. Kit did not respond.